Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-6587cd75c8-gglxz Total loading time: 0.001 Render date: 2025-04-24T03:57:40.148Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

22 - The Ottoman Encounter and the Law of Nations in the Old Regime

from Part II - International Law in Old Regime Europe (1660–1775)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2025

By
Maurits H. van den Boogert
General editor
Randall Lesaffer
Randall Lesaffer
Affiliation:
KU Leuven and Tilburg University
Get access

Summary

Between 1660 and 1775 the number of European countries with diplomatic relations with the Ottoman Empire that obtained ahdames of their own grew rapidly, but many of these newcomers did not establish networks of consulates and vice-consulates in the eastern Mediterranean. Instead, they appointed the consuls of other European nations as their vice-consuls. This did not hurt the legal privileges of the merchants from these countries. In the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some nations asked the Ottoman government to renew their capitulations several times with the single aim of obtaining more privileges. This development culminated in the French capitulations of 1740, which incorporated the clauses of virtually all earlier ahdnames. In the eyes of many Ottomans, the capitulations of 1740 came to symbolise the Europeans’ ceaseless attempts to obtain more and more privileges from the Turks. But the French renewal of their capitulations in 1673 already laid the foundations for the rise of imperialism. It was then that the Ottoman authorities granted Ottoman subjects working for foreigners as interpreters or as warehousemen the same fiscal and legal status as the Westerners. It was also in 1673 that the French had their role as protectors of the Christian Holy Places in Jerusalem, as well as of all Catholic clergymen – not just Western missionaries, but all Catholic clerics – in the Levant codified in their capitulations. It was this French model that the Russians used in 1774 to claim their own protectorate over all Greek Orthodox Christians in the Ottoman realm.

Keywords

Old Regime Europelaw of nationsOttoman encountertradediplomacyconsulsextraterritorial jurisdictioncapitulationsreligionminorities
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of International Law , pp. 711 - 737
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Further Reading

Abbott, G. F., Under the Turk in Constantinople. A Record of Sir John Finch’s Embassy 1674–1681 (London: Macmillan 1920).Google Scholar
Atabey, Ali, ‘Ransom intermediaries and the redemption of Ottoman captives in the Early Modern Mediterranean: a sociolegal view from seventeenth-century Galata’, Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 8 (2021) 261–89.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berchtold, Johannes, Recht und Gerechtigkeit in der Konsulargerichtsbarkeit. Britische Extraterritorialität im Osmanischen Reich 1825–1914 (Munich: Oldenbourg 2009).Google Scholar
Can, Lâle, Low, Michael Christopher, Schull, Kent F. and Zens, Robert (eds.), The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Groot, Alexander H., ‘The historical development of the capitulatory regime in the Ottoman Middle East from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries’, Oriente Moderno, 22 (2003) 575–604.Google Scholar
Dumas, Juliette, ‘Müste’min dealing with the Ottoman justice: role and strategy of the ambassador’, Oriente Moderno, 93 (2013) 477–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fodor, Pál, ‘Maltese pirates, Ottoman captives and French traders in the early seventeenth-century Mediterranean’ in Dávid, Géza and Fodor, Pál (eds.), Ransom Slavery along the Ottoman Borders (Early Fifteenth – Early Eighteenth Centuries) (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2007) 221–37.Google Scholar
Heyd, Uriel, Studies in Old Ottoman Criminal Law (ed. Ménage, V. L., Oxford: Clarendon Press 1973).Google Scholar
Heywood, Colin, ‘Ottoman territoriality versus maritime usage: the Ottoman islands and English privateering in the wars with France 1689–1714’ in Vatin, Nicolas and Veinstein, Gilles (eds.), Insularités ottomans (Istanbul: Institut français d’études anatoliennes 2016) 145–73.Google Scholar
Heywood, Colin, and Parvev, Ivan (eds.), The Treaties of Carlowitz (1699). Antecendents, Course and Consequences (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2020).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Olnon, Merlijn, ‘“Brought under the law of the land”: the history, demography and geography of crossculturalism in early modern Izmir, and the Köprülü Project of 1678’ (PhD thesis, Leiden University 2013).Google Scholar
Panaite, Viorel, Ottoman Law of War and Peace. The Ottoman Empire and its Tribute-Payers from North of the Danube (2nd edn, Leiden and Boston: Brill 2019).Google Scholar
Pedani, Maria Pia, The Ottoman–Venetian Border (15th–18th Centuries) (Venice: Edizioni Ca’ Foscari-Digital Publishing 2017).Google Scholar
Sicking, Louis, and Wijffels, Alain (eds.), Conflict Management in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, 1000–1800. Actors, Institutions and Strategies of Dispute Settlement (Leiden and Boston: Brill/Nijhoff 2020).Google Scholar
Smiley, Will, From Slaves to Prisoners of War. The Ottoman Empire, Russia, and International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2018).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talbot, Michael, British-Ottoman Relations, 1661–1807. Commerce and Diplomatic Practice in Eighteenth-Century Istanbul (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press 2017).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
van den Boogert, Maurits H., The Capitulations and the Ottoman Legal System. Qadis, Consuls and Beratlıs in the 18th Century (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2005).Google Scholar
van den Boogert, Maurits H., ‘Written proof between capitulations and Ottoman kadi courts in the early modern period’, Turkish Historical Review, 12 (2021) 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vanneste, Tijl, Intra-European Litigation in Eighteenth-Century Izmir. The Role of the Merchants’ Style (Leiden and Boston: Brill 2022).Google Scholar
White, Joshua M., ‘Fetva diplomacy: the Ottoman Şeyhülislam as trans-imperial intermediary’, Journal of Early Modern History, 19 (2015) 199–221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
White, Joshua M., Piracy and Law in the Ottoman Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2018).Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×